As a full moon holiday in Colombo brought the first Test to a temporary halt on Sunday, Zimbabwean captain Stuart Carlisle was left ruing a string of poor umpiring decisions on the first three days that leaves his side facing a massive innings defeat.
Zimbabwe were forced to follow on 402 runs in arrears after being bowled out for 184. They then lost both openers, Hamilton Maskadza and Trevor Gripper, before the close of day three.
Carlisle admitted that his side had bowled poorly on the first two days and some batsmen had been guilty of throwing away their wickets in the first innings, but he also believed his side to have been extremely unlucky.
Zimbabwe were the victims of seven dubious decisions, starting with early let-offs for Marvan Atapattu (caught short leg) and Sanath Jayasuriya (caught behind). Russel Arnold was then reprieved on the first evening because of poor quality television replays.
In their first innings, Muttiah Muralitharan won two doubtful decisions - Gavin Rennie (lbw) and Grant Flower (caught bat-pad) – before Pakistani umpire Riazruddin gave Travis Friend a palpable wrong decision. Then, to stir up Zimbabwe's frustration even more, Trevor looked unlucky to have been given out caught behind in the second innings just before the close.
Sri Lanka, too, suffered, with Andy Flower getting two lives and Kumar Sangakkara unlucky to be given out caught at slip by the third umpire after inconclusive replays, but Zimbabwe bore the brunt of the bad decision-making.
Carlisle said: "We took a gamble with the toss and we were very unfortunate. We had certain opportunities and it could have been a completely different story. We could have had two wickets down relatively early and that would have changed the match a bit.
"As a fielding and batting side we have been very unlucky on certain things and it really hasn't gone our way. Something needs to be done and I am sure that it will be eventually, but these important factors change games."
He tried his best to be phlegmatic: "You just have to say its one of those things in cricket. Individuals make mistakes – although when they are made it can be very hard to lift the guys."
But also acknowledged that his side had been outplayed: "We are lacking a spinner and we backed our seamers but the Sri Lankan batsmen made full use of a good batting pitch. Then there were some pretty ordinary shots from out batters and once again a couple of 30s and 40s that needed to be turned into big scores.
"We are now at the back end of it, but we sure are going to try our hardest to save this game. It is a pretty good batting pitch, but 30s and 40s are not going to do it. It's up to the eight batters left to get really stuck in and put together some big partnerships."
On a slow, low wicket offering little assistance to the faster bowlers, Zimbabwe's faint hopes securing a draw, hang on how they counter the wiles of Muralitharan. Carlisle was not displeased with their efforts against him thus far, even though he has already taken six wickets.
"Murali is clearly a word class bowler and he is always going to be hard in Sri Lanka. We had a game plan - although it's up to individual batsmen to say, "This is what I am going to do," and stick to it – and, on the whole, I was happy with how the guys played Murali. He got four wickets in the first innings and too of those were fortunate."
© CricInfo
| Teams | Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe. |
| Players/Umpires | Stuart Carlisle, Muttiah Muralitharan, Trevor Gripper, Kumar Sangakkara, Grant Flower. |
| Tours | Zimbabwe in Sri Lanka |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Results - Forthcoming Desktop Scoreboard |
|
|
|
||||||
| |||
|
| |||
| |||
| |||
| |||
| |||
| |||
|
